so close to being disowned

We all had our deal breakers when it came to picking our spouses. For me, she had to be able to poach an egg properly. Any woman intimidated by the preparation of a perfect poached egg need not apply. Now that we are back from our excellent vacation, we celebrated the return to routine with a special poached egg dinner. Robin excelled at making mine. Two runny delicious rounded eggs mounded on top of well toasted bread. Before tasting, I made my traditional examination of the poaching liquid. There was little evidence of any remaining egg white. Riley had his first poached egg this evening and I explained to him that the poaching of an egg is matched only on a culinary level to an omelet. The difference is that a poorly prepared omelet is palatable, while the only place worthy of a badly poached egg is the trash. To my dismay, he turned his nose up at it. In fact, the only way Robin got him to eat most of it was to dash on lemon pepper and trade him bite for bite with prune cake. I tasted the egg with lemon pepper, it was terrible. How can this be a son of mine. I nearly disowned him then and there.

Fortunately, he has many other excellent qualities. While as of late, he has shown moments of intense emotion, he is still fairly well behaved. If there is a picture of you in our house, he knows your name and can say it in his own way. Aunt Charlene is "lene" and Aunt Stephanie is "stepni." He understands counting and can do it with you through five, but he will also follow your eight with an enthusiastic "NINE!" His dexterity is pretty good. He loves to "seep seep seep" with his broom, pound nails into his tool box and manipulate bolts. The table manners are coming along. We now give him a plate with food on it for him to spear with his fork and a spoon for his soup or cereal. After holding out till he was 18 months, we finally let him watch an educational video that he knows by heart. He also knows several of his books inside and out. He can recite some pages before we turn them, including a particularly long one that I can't stand reading to him.

I guess I will keep him after all. Soon Robin will post pictures of our visit to Washington.